A MIDDLE-AGED woman was miffed when the santan seller at the Section 16 wet market refused to sell her the 8kg of coconut milk she wanted.
With a long queue of tired, restless customers behind her, the incident was somewhat bizarre and comical.
"I can only give you 3kg. Look behind you, Kak, there's a long line. They will be angry if I don't give them what they want," reasoned the seller.
I watched her getting more impatient with the situation as she squeezed a lumpy portion of kerisik (coconut butter) in a polybag amid her anxiety to get the coconut milk, seemingly at any cost.
The seller told her to stop squeezing the polybag placed in a polystyrene box. Of course, she kept insisting that she should get what she wanted even as the customers behind her moaned and groaned incessantly.
It was almost midnight. The market had extended business hours to 2am to allow panicked customers to buy last-minute produce for this year's Hari Raya which "unceremoniously" fell on May 2 after the Keeper of the Rulers' Seal, Tan Sri Syed Danial Syed Ahmad, made the official announcement earlier that evening.
"Why do you need 8kg for?" asked the seller.
"Why not? I have six different Raya dishes that use a good amount of santan," she retorted, adding that her Hari Raya would be incomplete without the milky liquid.
By her side was her daughter who was somewhat embarrassed and pleaded with her mother to buy carton coconut milk instead. "Your rendang, your lontong won't taste the same with carton coconut milk," she snapped at her daughter.
The customers behind her sighed in disbelief, with one man teasingly asked what the other four dishes were.
The daughter stepped back in embarrassment due to the tongue-lashing.
Without much ado, the seller then weighed three polybags of santan at a kilogramme each, and then told the lady to pay RM30.
The lady then went to another santan shop next door to buy more, but was immediately turned down by the shop owner who had earlier witnessed the incident.
I had never encountered such a peculiar scene with panic shoppers scrambling to buy essential produce, all because of the desire to celebrate a perfect Hari Raya.
Unfortunately, it was not the case for this lady and many others.
I have to confess, my family was one of the thousands, if not millions of Muslims across the country who were part of this frenzy on the night before Hari Raya.
In the shopping mecca of Shah Alam for Malay-designed clothes, late-night customers thronged the PKNS complex in Section 14 to complete their festive errands.
Many took the advantage of the announcement (of the earlier-than-expected Hari Raya celebration), hoping to find bargains.
They knew they would get good discounts from clothes traders who were equally in a state of panic and were trying to sell off their remaining stock.
Meanwhile, young men and women thronged the classy fashion boutiques in Section 7, as well as those at the Shah Alam Convention Centre mall that displayed the latest designs for baju kurung and baju Melayu.
In shops where customers were packed like sardines, no one observed physical distancing, with some even bringing children under the age of 11 with them.
In Kg Jawa, Klang, my son queued behind scores of customers simply to buy three stalks of lemang. He left home at 8pm and returned past midnight.
The seller had brought in "enforcements" all the way from Banting and Ulu Langat to supply him with more lemang and more wood to hasten the cooking in an attempt to meet the deluge of demands from customers.
Then, my friend, Haji Bakar related a funny incident in which his neighbour called him at 2am while he and his wife were about to finish cooking rendang and kuah kacang (peanut sauce).
The neighbour inquired if Haji Bakar had an extra cooking gas cylinder, because his had run out.
Since Haji Bakar was holding the keys to a nearby house belonging to his younger sibling who had gone back to their hometown, he tried contacting his brother to seek permission to "borrow" the gas cylinder.
But, his younger brother could not be reached so he decided to go ahead and take the gas cylinder away.
Indeed, the announcement of an earlier-than-expected Hari Raya had caused havoc that many would remember for years to come — a frenzied time for most Muslims who were caught in the chaos of the night before Raya.
The writer, a former NST journalist, is a film scriptwriter whose penchant is finding new food haunts
